A stompbox? What’s that, a guitar pedal? No silly, it’s a WWAN (Wireless Wide Area Network) box that picks up data from cellular towers then redistributes it so that you can use it in whichever way you please. A good example is if you had one in a car, you could trace the car and whether it’s moving and track where it’s headed. Making one requires a few parts and some manual labor working and testing, but it pays off. You can now use Google Maps’ Satellite Viewing to track things. It’s got so much potential to be used in good and bad ways.
I must admit, when I saw the title in the RSS feed, I was estatic to go read about some cool pedal. It’s still cool, but . . . darn!
Very nice! This one is worth reading all the way through.
yeah, baby, my submission makes the main page. Anyone know if they have flat rate 3G in Europe? That’d be great to take it around the world with you.
Unfortunately, Google Maps doesn’t supply geographic coordinates or scale with the picture, so it isn’t of much use for GPS applications.
this is the vigilante lo-jack system
Well, I’ve long wanted to do something like this as well. I’ve pondered radiomodems and even hopping on unsecured WiFi networks to send GPS coordinates, but an $80/mo. subscription to Verizon’s EVDO network was never really an option.
Unfortunately, the underlying concept of this idea still remains for those of us who don’t want to pay that much (at least per month). Any other ideas?
Perhaps a 3g smartphone with bluetooth. Develop an app that would read coordinates from a bluetooth GPS and up the through the phone to an FTP where your PHP app could properly display the results along with the google map.
Of course, I know nothing of using 3g on smartphones.
Cool! I had no idea this made HackADay. Thanks guys!
If anybody has any questions, just holler…
how do you bulid one?
Where would one find the instructions for building a stompbox? This is really cool!
just seen this on twitter cheers for the info.